Ideas in Action was hosted by James Glassman, founding executive director of the Bush Institute and veteran journalist. As former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy in the George W. Bush administration, he led the “government-wide international strategic communications effort.”[4] Glassman was also a senior fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He co-authored, with Kevin A. Hassett, the ill-timed 1999 book, Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market, which erroneously predicted that the stock market was “undervalued” and would continue to rise sharply in ensuing years.[5] Glassman is well known on the political talk show circuit, having hosted TechnoPolitics for PBS, MoneyPolitics for Washington’s ABC affiliate WJLA, and Capital Gang Sunday for CNN.[6]

Glassman launched TCS in 2000 as a “virtual think tank,” covering everything from the war in Iraq to Milton Friedman’s views on health care reform. Its mission statement read: ” The collision of technology and public policy has enormous implications for our lives and our future. Tech Central Station is here to help provide the right answers to many of those questions with the news, analysis, research, and commentary you need to understand how technology is changing and shaping our world, and how you can make sense of it all.”[7]

A December 2003 Washington Monthly article about TCS described it as “journo-lobbying”—a new innovation in lobbying “driven primarily by the influence of industry. … The new game is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which officials make policy decisions, which means funding everything from think tanks to issue ads to phony grassroots pressure groups.”[8]

According to the Washington Monthly, soon after ExxonMobile was listed as a sponsor, TCS began running articles attacking the Kyoto accord and the science of global warming. After the pharmaceutical lobby PhRMA hired TCS’s then parent company, DCI group (a public affairs firm), TCS columnists opined against legislation that would allow the reimportation of drugs from Canada.

In 2006, TCS was purchased by its then-editor Nick Schulz, becoming TCSDaily.[9] In 2008, Schulz, a former political editor on Fox News, became a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, editing AEI’s in-house magazine The American.[10] In 2010, TCSDaily was being published under the auspices of Ideas in Action.[11]

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The same calculus that brought Iran and world powers to make a deal and has led remaining JCPOA signatories to preserve it without the U.S. still holds: the alternatives to this agreement – a race between sanctions and centrifuges that could culminate in Iran obtaining the bomb or being bombed – would be much worse.

With Bolton and Pompeo by his side and Mattis departed, Trump may well go with his gut and attack Iran militarily. He’ll be encouraged in this delusion by Israel and Saudi Arabia. He’ll of course be looking for some way to distract the media and the American public. And he won’t care about the consequences.

As this past week began, with the shutdown of parts of the US government entering its third week, Republicans, desperate to force the Democrat’s hand, decided to play the “Israel card.” The effort failed.

President Donald Trump’s sudden decision to pull troops out of Syria has given hardliners reason to celebrate, even as they prepare for the next battle with what they believe are US-supported jihadist forces.